While at the buffet table

On holiday we gorge ourselves at the hotel buffet breakfast, something we do not partake of in our normal daily routine back home.

You can learn a lot about human nature, other people and perhaps yourself at the buffet table. Or rather tables, because arranged across 3 rooms are tables of food of all types and shapes and tastes. It is interesting to watch people’s behaviour when they are presented with an unlimited amount of food. More food than they can hope to consume. Food that would not other otherwise come within miles of one’s normal breakfast table. I rationalize this feast by arguing that this will last us til dinner. And often this is the case. After breakfast, we might strike out on a tour and eat nothing again til evening time. Yet, even with this defense, my 3 course breakkie is greed to the extreme. Someone cooking omelettes to my instruction? Great. Fruit juice, coffee, toast, cheese, salad, bacon, roast potatoes (for breakfast?), noodles and yoghurt. Wow, I’m stuffed.

Before all this though is the “wait to be seated” instruction. This is plainly written at the entrance, but in an otherwise open plan dining area, this is problematical as holiday weary families emerge from all parts and miss the sign. Although this morning you could not miss the meaning as there was a distinct queue, and I was in it. Despite this, a burly Russian waddled up with his family in tow and plonked his plastic credit card room “key” down in a table that just 30 seconds earlier had been allocated to another family, who were now at the juice counter. The Asian staff quietly informed him that the table was someone else’s and pointed him to our queue. He stalked off muttering something in a surly fashion. Later I saw him walking around looking for something. Rather than ask a kindly waitress, he took a marmalade pot from an empty table as his. He showed no compunction at this, it was the done thing. The same way he ignored the queue and tried to abscond a table for himself earlier. I do not blame the Russian necessarily, but one thing I have noticed on this island is the amount of Russian and Chinese tourists, something that simply had not existed last time I visited in the mid 1990s. Signs and menus in local restaurants and bars are all in English, Russian and Chinese (and nothing else – not even in Thai.) The opening of their countries and increasing wealth to a privileged emerging middle class has allowed more of them to become tourists. Every second family in our hotel is Russian it would appear. Nothing wrong with that, it’s just an observation. It might show changing times and increasing influence of these countries. I think I’ve heard but one American accent. The culture shock for them might be quite strong. The etiquette of queuing is not ingrained. Yet.

Back at the buffet table, I notice someone recognizable next to me. He’s taller than I imagined, looks fit and ripped, but the face is a give away. It’s Mason Crane, the newly tested English leggie who delivered the worst bowling analysis of any debutant in history just last week in Sydney. Despite this, analysts think he has something. Didn’t Warnie go for 1 fer loads in his first test?

So what do you do when a world class sportsman is standing next to you? Well, if you’re English like me, you smile and say nothing. After all, he’s on holiday poor lad, he’s only 20, has his girlfriend and parents and a mate with him. So I move on down the buffet and take my seat. Proof, should you need it dear reader, is in the photo (as taken by my dear wife) …

The buffet breakfast is convenient for the weary traveller, who can stoke up before a hard day battling the crowds at local tourist spots or around the pool. It’s also economic for the hotel, who don’t need to wait on tables besides ensuring the trays of food are replenished and helping people with some replacement cutlery or marmalade pot. Or, in one case, vegemite for a middle aged Aussie.

In this way, the holiday buffet contract is complete, and we can waddle off self satisfied to whatever the day has in store for us. Perhaps a game of squash can assuage the guilt of the 3-course breakkie? Maybe, just maybe.